User Reviews

As this episode opens it is night aboard Andromeda and Harper is at the controls. To pass the time he challenges a Nietzschean ship to a race to the nearest slip-point. He has a little trick up his sleeve, something he calls 'Harper's Afterburner'... this does boost him to victory but as they enter slipstream it also endangers the ship. They survive this then receive a strange transmission for a distant star system... it is from somewhere a thousand light years away but appears to be only a few days old. Dylan then starts hearing a woman's voice, which beckons him to that system. They head there and discover that the signal is coming from a frozen moon that is about to be hit by a once in eight hundred year event which would almost certainly kill anybody on there. Leaving Tyr in command of Andromeda Dylan leads the rest of the main crew to the ice moon where they meet the locals and Dylan receives a strange proposition... one he may not be allowed to refuse.

This is another fairly mixed episode. The central story was fun even if at times in like a script left over from the original 'Star Trek' as the captain attracts a stunning alien woman on a moon that looks like a set... given this series origins that isn't a total surprise. There is some fun as Tyr verbally spars with a Nietzschean captain which ultimately adds some more ambiguity to Tyr's character; Keith Hamilton Cobb is on good form here. The activity on the moon is fun although certain aspects would certainly be unacceptable if the genders had been reversed... unfortunately it is impossible to go into detail without spoiling key moments. Overall a decent enough episode if not a classic.

I like to think I would cringe at this episode even if I'd watched it 20 years ago. Andromeda occasionally falls prey to formulaic sex jokes, and Season 3 is rife with them. Harper clownishly lays it on thick to good-locking alien women, while those alien women seduce Hunt. Annoying because hackneyed.

But this episode takes the cake on casting Hunt as the alpha dog, the macho man. The social relation between Hunt and alien woman could be an interesting plot point if handled well, but the writing feels like a 1960s-era Captain Kirk winking at the camera. Look, Sorbo is attractive but you gotta show not tell.

The saving grace of this episode (and season) is that Tyr shows his humorous side when he effectively handles his task on the ship while Hunt is...otherwise occupied.